Police: Autistic Boy Lived In Filth, Ate Only Chocolate

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It sounds like the mother was having mental health problems of some sort, perhaps she was an aspie, perhaps not. People with depression can also end up living in conditions like that.

It sounds like she loved the child, but she wasnt coping with the situation.

I know I have to work very hard to keep things clean and tidy, when my natural tendency is to be messy, hoard things and feel overwhelmed when there is a lot of cleaning to do. I put a lot of effort into it when I am ok, but if I got into bad depression I probably would need outside help with housework etc.

Welcome to Indiana where autism stands for another opportunity to abuse people.

We had an autistic boy flip out and kill a judge's daughter about a year ago and they practically took him to the chair. They forgot to mention that she had been picking at him for years. He just finally lost it.

About 3 months ago we had an autistic boy get tazed because he had a behaviour that the school couldn't control.

Oh, and don't forget about me. My AS kid was removed from my custody because I have AS and because I got him diagnosed. Now they want me to pay child support.

It's practically a third world country here. Land of the not quite right.

That is what happens when the lunatics are in charge or running the asylum. My two sisters were both molested in foster care and I didn't exactly have a great life being adopted. "Who watches the Watchmen" and who gets to decide what/who is insane ? After living through 7+ years of King George, no one will convince me that at least half my country is not insane...wish some of them weren't aspies...that was disappointing to find out. Guess even AS doesn't rule out insanity but at least they have the excuse of trying to exist in an NT dominated world as an excuse....that can drive any aspie a little nuts.

How many members read that forum? I usually read General, Love and Dating, and occasionally Politics and Philosophy or Computers and Science.

I was threatened with eviction and had no rotting food, garbage was taken out, dishes are done. Yes things were dusty but there was no mold growing, no maggots<--hate those things.The reason was that I collect things and have rescued and repaired and refinished furniture that others throw out<---and I'm the "crazy" one ? I hade to reorginize my things so that they conformed to the idea of "order" that my landlord has and donate many of my things to create more space, (hell, I could walk from one room to another with no more problem then I ever have...ie, I bumped my shins a lot.


I do agree the this mother and child needed halp and an intervention to help them live together in a more healthy manor...but to arrest her ? Surely she would have found better services in a womens shelter or mental health place where she could get the appropriate evaluation and services ? I can't believe she managed to keep the kid a live living on chocolate. The whole story is not the "whole story", by far. There was no reports that the child had been physicaly harmed and considering th self harm of many auties, that is a bit surprising...she must have at least done some things right. I think perhaps she had a justified fear that if she sought any social service help, her child would be taken from her. If she has no understanding of her own AS, she may assume that every one will think she is crazy...is she far wrong?

Obviously I don't condone the way either of these human beings had to live but I don't see how any one can pass judgement on her as a human being with out the full story, and that would require some one to actually talk to her.

Just to let you all know, here are some of the things that go around Indianapolis.

The police here are absolutely terrible. Sometimes they'll arrest anyone for just about anything. They're power-mad. Nothing more, nothing less. They really do a lot more than they should be doing.

As for the schools, Indiana does something called townships. There are nine main townships per county. The township in their area is not all that bad. The southwest side is a decent side of town. Now if they were on the east side, that'd be a different story entirely. Also, when it comes to townships, you can't switch to another township's school unless you move there. Indiana is one of the only states that does it this way.

Ever watch Reno 911? I've been to Reno, and the cops in Reno, especially in the city of Reno, really are that bad. Reportedly some Hollywood producer was in Reno on vacation and got a little drunk and ended up in the drunk tank at the Washoe County Jail. He was treated so badly that he vowed revenge, and the show Reno 911 is it. Washoe County Sheriffs is only a little better. Outlying areas tend to hire rednecks as cops, and if you're not driving a Ford F250 4x4 while wearing white skin you'll get pulled over. Weirdly, Nevada Highway Patrol troopers are always nice and courteous and professional. Since a lot of their job is patrolling some really desolate area, they get a lot of opportunities to screw with people, but they never do. In the desert, changing schools is NOT an option-the next school may be a hundred miles away. Nevada does districts by county. Clark County (Las Vegas) has a huge, unwieldy school system because of this, but "heritage" is not to be messed with.

Indiana and Michigan have townships because that's the way they were surveyed, almost 200 years ago. A township was originally a certain number of square acres (I can't remember exactly how many) and farmers could buy a certain set percentage of a township. Ever hear the phrase "the back forty"? 40 acres was the minimum lot size that you could buy in a township. The township idea was why some people proposed giving freed slaves "40 acres and a mule" after the Civil War. Deep South plantations covered tens of thousands of acres because tobacco exhausts the land quickly. The only way to stay viable was to plant in different areas every few years and let everything else regenerate. The proposal was to seize the plantations and create townships, then offer 40 acre plots to freedmen. It probably wouldn't have worked even if it hadn't run up against the property-is-sacred ideas of the time. Anyway, the township method of surveying was considered highly advanced in the early 19th century, and much of America is laid out in the squares method pioneered in the townships. Americans are obsessed with square layouts-our central cities have square blocks, our land is laid out in squares. California, Louisiana, and early settlement areas in Virginia and the Northeast are the only places that don't have square surveys.

Dont knock the square layouts. Having a road and rail network laid out 2000 years ago based entirely on the path of least resistance leads to some hideously convoluted and maze-like streets. Comparing the neat straight lines of New York blocks with the convoluted person-wide rat-warren that is the original York makes me want to cry. Oh to be in a city where you can actually see the laws of perspective at work...

Some of the cities in the New England area are set up in frustrating ways. I always got lost in places like Danbury, CT or Bethel, or Norwalk. The streets appeared to radiate out from a town green. Sometimes a street name would change to something else. Lots of time it just didn't make sense!

And I agree about NYC. I never got lost there. All you needed were the street numbers.

A lot of New England seems to have followed the Old England layouts. I'm not sure why or how New York evaded the trap.

Maybe the mother had deppression,it's quite common for people on the autism spectrum to have a parent with clinical deppression.My own mother left the house in a very bad condition and could'nt cope.
A dirty house could meen that the child need's all the mother's time and attention and in that situation social service's should have a house cleaning service to help parents cope.

That is the catch 22 situation of some parents on the spectrum though...if they come forward to ask for help from social services, they are afraid they will be deemed bad parents and lose their children or be forced to put there children in a "home" or give them medication. Her fears were probably justified.

Well, he MUST have gone to a doctor to be diagnosised with Autism

Plus people with severe Autism DON'T go to school

Well, I guess it is a good thing they didn't just euthanize the kid, huh?

I know kids and animals are different but they didn't arrest this guy for treating his animals far worse then the mother treated her child and they didn't mention offering him any help either other then killing most of his pets...thanks guys).

These are both individuals who are obviously in need of help but instead they arrest one and leave the other to "get on with it"...

I think that whenever government programs like CPS get involved they treat almost every case as "one size fits all" and not look at the circumstances close enough. I think that they should actually take the time to see if this case was disability related before sending people to prison. I also think that if the case was disability related that they should put her in some sort of treatment program if she was bullied as a child and teach her something about organization and parenting instead of using the rod too soon. Of course, there are cases where the parents willfully (as in they didn't have a disability) neglected and/or abused children. I'm not saying that people who willfully commit this kind of crime shouldn't be sent to prison, but I feel as if there should be alternatives for people with these kinds of disabilities. This is one of the reasons why more people should know about the entire autistic spectrum instead of only one part, which is mainly the side that is severely impaired.

As somebody who has lived in squaller for about 3 years during my own childhood I feel I can comment. My Mum was never the most house-proud person. While married to my Dad it was always him who had to initiate big clean-up sessions. He still comments on her untidiness. I remember my Grandma mentioning that she couldn't cook at all when her and my Dad first got married. Later on she was an excellent cook but the cleaning thing never clicked with her. AS? Dyspraxia? Things like that were unheard of back in those days. It was just taunted as plain laziness - which it isn't as many of us can account for.

Then she became an alcoholic and my Dad left her for another woman. She somewhat held it together at first but as time went by it became more and more cluttered and filthy and just to overwhelming to be tackled. She was severely depressed at that point, spending most of the time sleeping but still feeding me to her ability, even if that meant potato salad everyday for 6 weeks. Food is food at that stage. She tried. I learned to cook for myself at that point but I had no idea about cleaning or personal hygiene so we just sort of existed in our little hole together. I also didn't attend school at that point. A little later I was forced back to school after my Dad, who only lived down the street, finally noticed after 6 month that I wasn't attending. he didn't help me with the rest though. Then the bullying started - obviously, filthy kids don't fit in very well. It just made it worse and I wish I would have been able to not go to school at that point. There were no anti-bullying policies at that time, teachers didn't want to know or help and I had nobody to turn to. My Dad did his best to ignore what was going on. Later on he said it was the best he could do, that if he would have taken me away from my Mum I would have turned against him (which is probably true). But I think he could have helped in other ways and his response was a selfish one.

I was 12/13/14 years old at the time. Today I'm pretty sure my Mum was AS. The alcohol was her way of coping. She didn't drink for fun, she drank at first to socialize and later on to forget. Looking back and knowing what I know about myself it makes sense. I am still not the best at house keeping myself these days but I know its not laziness. Its more a case of being overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. I want to have a clean house and I'm getting closer and closer to that goal but it took me 30 years to get as far as I have. I have no kids, I have the time to break things down and so I cope quite well. My mum had two little loud and messy kids and a big house to take care of with no help. Apart from my Dads big cleaning days. Once he went it just got too much. And although it was hard and I felt angry later on I can sort of understand it. And my Mum DID love us more than anything. Not being able to cope does not equate to cruelty or not loving your child. Yes, I wasn't washed, my clothes weren't washed, the house wasn't clean and she didn't give a flying hoot about whether I went to school but she fed me and she cuddled me and she loved me all the same.